The symbiotic theatre: an evolutionary view of what's inside our heads apart from brain.
With apologies to Wole Soyinka

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Editor's apology

Brother Jero can be violent and intemperate, and I apologise
on his behalf.He was, apparently,
unreasonably upset by the assertion that human cultures are primarily adaptive
at the group level.He misunderstood
this to imply that culture evolves at the group level.He was confused be Peter Richerson’s (whom he
has admired greatly for years) phrase “If selection also acts on cultural
variation, say group selection on primitive institutions…”

If I could attempt to explain Jero's point of view, you may
find it in your hearts to forgive him.He does not lead a happy life.

He feels that in biological evolution, selection takes place
at the level of the loci of difference
between one organism and another of the same species. These loci, if selected,
are transmitted down the branching line of descent, intermittently or entirely.

In cultural evolution, selection takes place at the level of
loci of difference between two things of the same sort (pointy sticks), both in
the world and in the metaverse (sticks), or in the metaverse alone (the proof
that the diagonal of a square with unit sides is incommensurable); though it
must be born in mind that the latter, and all like all processes, are
distributed about the world in material form, in the case of that particular
diagonal in binary code, print, diagrams and so on.

In biological evolution, it has not been demonstrated how
selection could take place at the level of the group or species (the example of
eusocial insects certainly does not make this case, and it is very simply demonstrable
how this is so).What is clear is that it is the environment which makes the
selection, e.g. what selects most powerfully for the male peacock’s tail is
that part of the environment which decides on the potential reproductive
fitness of that particular tail; that
part of the tail's environment which is the female peacock.

Likewise, it has not been demonstrated how a resilient and
adaptable but overall stable set of loci of difference (sure he’s not handsome
[organism], but he makes me/us laugh [culture]) is any different from the
peacock’s tail. The loci of difference that compose an ability to make people
laugh are located in a single organism. The environment makes the selection. It might be one person or ten million. Each one of the ten million will or will not laugh in various degrees. If the the ten million all laugh at the joke, then those loci of difference in the funny guy will have been selected ten million times, and one can continue with a narrative about in what further manner they might evolve. But that is not selection by the group. It is a selection by ten million locations in the environment. Clearly, as with a biological species, it is more durable to be selected ten million times, to be a rat, than it is to be selected just a few times, to be a white-lipped rhinoceros. But ten million rats are ten million indvidual organisms. And ten million people laughing at a joke means the joke has been selected with replication potential ten million times. What it does not mean is that a group has made a selection. It is not clear where in the group such a selection might be made.

If one person laughs at the joke, and the other 9999999 laugh because everyone else is, then the joke has not been selected and the evolutionary content is derisory.

This is not to assert that groups, a Roman legion versus a
Gallic army, are not themselves selected by the environment.The battle
is an emergent process, amillion or a
trillion loci of difference, the length of a sword, the relative placement of
shields, a mosquito in the eye at the wrong moment, all lost in noise,
unrecordable.The selection only comes
in retrospect, after massive selective destruction of information.The selection will be made by a retrospective
environment, upon cultural agglomerations such as victory, protocols and
procedures, weaponry, timing, spatial aspects, logistics, use of terrain and so
on; a bit like assessing a design of a mobile phone.And it will be composed of anecdote, report,
expert witness, progressive selective destruction of information until conclusions are drawn
and put into effect, or not, in time for the next battle.So the configuration of a group, an army, a
government, “the public”, can certainly be selected.

However, selection cannot ever take place at the level of
the group, but only at the level of loci of difference.The
selection cannot ever be made by a group, but only at the level of that part of the environment which is a human organism. It can course be done more than once, by more than one person..

Brother Jero is a simple soul, and feels these things far
too strongly.Again I apologise on his
behalf.

About Me

Old man, still puzzled, amused, horrified by the world. Question struck me, why are human beings, individually so intelligent, collectively so stupid? We have religious, political, factual beliefs that look like certainties. Yet if one lot is right (Yaweh is God, debt is sin) the rest of us are in error. That means most of us are wrong most of the time. How’s that work?
Seems we’re not rational creatures, though one of our special tricks is we can “do” reason. Our big brains are an environment where culture evolves. Survival is the driving force of culture, and a lie can usually survive better than the truth. Culture? Darwinian process in the virtual space where all our brains meet—not mystical, any more than cyberspace. Real, where processes continue. Needs discussion. So I blog about it.
I also have a life. A novel, Bad to the Bone, some plays on. I read, eat, drink a lot. My grandchildren say I swear too much, but what’s just enough? Crazy about mountain and road biking. I talk a bit, my wife says. Love music. The person who I have most admired ever is Wangari Maathai. Brother Jero is just the voice that comes to me when I try to blog about Evoculture.